Like many city suburbs Bitterne today is absorbed within the City of Southampton and bisected by a dual carriageway.

But Bitterne began as a group of farm-workers’ cottages. The Enclosure Acts led to the development of big estates owned by ‘The Gentry’ who occupied large houses. The estate workers were relocated to what became Bitterne Village.

It was this community that the churches in Bitterne were established to serve. Founded by the Rev John Usborne in 1853, Bitterne Parish Church featured boxed pews for the Gentry who paid for their “sittings”, whilst their servants occupied lower, open pews.

In 1953, 100 years after the Parish Church was founded, the centenary celebrations were attended by dignitaries, bishops and clergy from surrounding churches. Unlike today's journalists, the Evening Echo reported the sermons and prayers used in the anniversary service word for word.

In 1973, Bitterne was divided by two noisy main roads which joined at the Red Lion and funnelled traffic through the shops and down Lances Hill. The noise level of this traffic flow at the time was equivalent to Piccadilly in London. Not surprisingly people wanted to re-route the traffic around Bitterne on a bypass, but instead a road was constructed which divided the community of Bitterne in two.

In the 1970s people yearned for a kinder, simpler society in Bitterne, a community with more “heart”...
 

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